Sethi opens by meditating on the question of why people gain weight after college, even though eating healthily and exercising are simple and everyone knows how to do it. People prefer to debate the pros and cons of diets than to take action to actually lose the weight. Similarly, with money, we make predictions about stocks or the economy, and we debate the minutiae of interest rates, but we ultimately avoid taking the very basic steps that will bring us closer to our goals. The foundations of financial literacy aren’t as sexy as predicting the next hot stock, but they are infinitely more effective.

Sethi argues that managing money is so difficult because people are overwhelmed with information, and they fall prey to victim culture perpetuated by “a group of people—mostly disaffected people—who have decided it’s easier to be cynical than to improve themselves” (11). The media broadcasts clickbait stories that barrage ordinary people with predictions, leading them into Barry Schwartz’s “paradox of choice”: Glutted with information, people do nothing at all. He lists off seven common excuses that people give for why they can’t take control of their own money situation. He proceeds to a section on how his book will help his readers to overcome the

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